David Cameron has announced a ripping up of red tape. Yesterday we saw a new website appear called The Red Tape Challenge. Less bureaucracy is a good thing and listening to people from the real world is also welcome. But previous attempts and promises to decrease regulation have not been followed through, and evidence suggests that in fact more regulations are being created than abolished. Also, earlier attempt to listen to people online – like the spending challenge website – haven’t been a resounding success. So we’ll wait to see if this idea will fare any better, hopefully one of these ideas will have a significant impact on the mount of bureaucratic tasks that hinder rather than help any real output.

The private sector – and especially small entrepreneurs – can grow and employ more people once needless layers of forms and rules are stripped out. But who will be deciding which ideas to progress with? And will there be a resolve to implement good ideas? Because the truth is that bureaucrats are in the way of abolishing bureaucratic rules. It’s difficult to see some civil servants admitting that the public think half the tasks their office undertakes are pointless, and that significant change might lead to a smaller, more efficient and less costly back office. Ideally the task will be given to optimistic, dynamic staff who will be allowed to push for change. But there was a pretty successful programme that aired in the 80’s that made a satirical comedy of these very same challenges. Times haven’t really changed.

It will be interesting to watch how this website progresses. However if the government wants to being taken seriously on reducing insignificant, costly tasks, then as well as lifting burdens imposed centrally on the private sector, they need to focus on the public sector back office too, and work out how many people are creating work for themselves and are trying to look busy.

However, one heroic cat managed to cut some red tape this week. You might have seen this story. Five fire crews from up to 30 miles away were sent to rescue one tabby cat from a two-storey roof. I actually didn’t believe the story when I first heard about it; even when it was confirmed it still seemed like a silly mistake. It turned out to be a matter of procedure; they were complying with working at height regulations. Yes, fireman should be safe but some ladder climbing does come with the territory. This wasn’t a skyscraper, it was a two-storey house. And five fire engines from different towns and 22 firemen being sent out is clearly excessive and a waste of money and resources.

I criticised the excessive red tape, saying:

“It’s almost laughable but wasting resources is bad news for taxpayers and others who might have needed to be rescued, so it’s not funny. Of course we want firemen to be safe, but health and safety and red tape has resulted in an excessive and costly response.”

I added on ITV Anglia that surely fire chiefs should be allowed to exercise some common sense. And to their credit, they decided to act and change policy. Great. The cat is also safe too, apparently it found it’s own way down anyway. So a happy ending all round? Not quite, although Senior Fire chiefs had responded to calls for commons sense with a promise to change rules, Union bosses had a different perspective. The local chairman of the FBU agreed that sending five crews was excessive, but in a move almost as ridiculous as the initial story, he used the opportunity to say they needed more staff.

Andy Vingoe, Suffolk branch chairman of the FBU, said:

“Health and safety says that if we go up on to a roof, it brings into play our working at height procedures and safety system. If a cat is stuck on a roof there is a chance the owner could get distressed and try to rescue it themselves and we would end up having to rescue them as well. It is crazy and it’s overkill and if we are having to send five teams to an incident like that, what happens if there is a serious incident elsewhere? It strengthens our case that we need more people to make sure we have enough cover to cope with the demands of the service.”

But at least fire chiefs have reviewed their policy. Now all we need to do is get that cat on the Red Tape Challenge website. He seems pretty adept at getting rid of bureaucratic rules.

As a regular user of both the West Coast mainline and Paddington station I am increasingly worried about the impacts of the High Speed Rail. Underneath the grand statements and infinite promises being made by Phillip Hammond are a series of admissions that show this line will make many people’s journeys longer and less convenient.
We have been looking at the proposed business case, or lack of one, for the High Speed Rail line from London to Birmingham. We have analysed the plans and projected benefits for HS2 and found them severely flawed, see Chris Stokes’ article for the Wall Street Journal for a round up of the key points. The government’s case falls down.

One area where the project did seem to work was that it would deliver quicker journeys. Only marginally quicker to Birmingham, the journey time would be reduced by 30 minutes at a cost per family of £600 – a price you will pay even if you never use the line. Incredibly though, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph Andrew Gilligan has revealed that many areas are set to see a slower service. He expects the new train will disrupt existing train lines and so slow down the journeys of more rail users than it speeds up.

We’ve highlighted other ways of getting the capacity we need, and reducing overcrowding, at a much lower cost and without disruption other journeys in the same way. Chris Stokes, rail expert and author of our Report into High Speed Rail has highlighted that as the new and expensive trains will share a section of the line with existing trains there could be considerable delays in timetables as the trains share the line.

But Andrew Gilligan has looked at the issue in detail and found that government documents show certain current routes will be badly affected. The routes he points to are in the West Midlands and North West, London area stopping services, and trains leaving Paddington. He writes that:

“We can reveal that up to 750 trains every day to places not on the new high-speed line are likely to be slowed down, or scrapped, according to HS2 documents… Almost 40 million passenger journeys a year will be affected, with no HS2 alternative available to them – and that’s on current figures.
The services to be slowed and cut fall into three groups. The first are the existing fast trains from London to the West Midlands and North West, which will be “recast with reduced frequency”.
The annexes to the HS2 prospectus, published last year, state that the current 120 fast trains a day between London and Birmingham on the existing line (60 in each direction) will be reduced to about 40. Passengers to Birmingham will at least have a high-speed alternative, albeit at premium fares. But travellers to other destinations on the current line will not.
Coventry, for instance, will lose two-thirds of its fast trains to London and those that remain will be slowed down by 10 minutes. The existing Manchester and Liverpool services will be cut too, by about 50 trains. Stoke-on-Trent will lose half its London service, which will also be slower. Wolverhampton, Tamworth, Nuneaton and several other places will suffer a similar fate.
According to MOIRA, the rail industry traffic database, Coventry alone is the fourth busiest intercity destination from Euston, with 976,000 passengers making the trip last year. The number of passengers travelling between the smaller Midlands cities and London is collectively a million a year greater than the number travelling from Birmingham to London.
Yet cannibalised transport links will almost certainly worsen the serious economic inequalities that already exist between regional hubs such as Birmingham and their much less prosperous satellite cities.
The second group of passengers affected will be in the London area. Here, the prospectus says, the local stopping service to Watford could be “removed” or diverted to help free up platform space at Euston for high-speed rail. Though scarcely as glamorous as Mr Hammond’s shiny new line, this service alone runs 130 trains a day and carries five million passengers a year, twice as many as currently travel from Euston to Birmingham.
The largest group affected, however, is in a completely different part of the country. According to the HS2 prospectus, trains coming into Paddington will be slowed down to stop at a new HS2 interchange at Old Oak Common, just west of London.
The idea is to improve the connectivity of the new route – but this alone will slow down the London-bound rail services of around a fifth of the country, including the whole of the Thames Valley, western England and South Wales. About 500 trains a day currently run in and out of Paddington, carrying more than 29 million passengers
a year.”

Click here to read more from Andrew Gilligan

These figures are shocking. The train line will impact on existing busy train routes and slow down other journeys. It’s a worrying knock on effect for this extremely expensive project.  It was bad enough to imagine that hard pressed taxpayers in many parts of the country would be saddled with the bill without needing high speed rail. The potential for the train to slow down so many other critical routes suggests this investment could be an even worse deal than we thought.

There is an urgent need for savings to be made in police forces across the country. Theresa May, Home Secretary, yesterday made an announcement on the how the Government will reform police spending.

The bill for staff makes up three quarters of the overall police budget, so there is almost no option but to make savings in this area.  There are also examples of police being offered extra payments for overtime or bonuses on top of their salaries that don’t seem to offer value for taxpayers’ money (the £450 million a year overtime bill has come under considerable criticism) these payments need to be reviewed too.  The coming review could see the biggest changes to police pay and perks in 30 years.

I debated the issue of police spending reform this morning on BBC Radio Oxford with Graham Smith, chairman of Thames Valley Police Federation.  I brought up an example I’ve heard several times, where four hours of overtime are paid if a policeman picked up his phone once in an evening off. Graham Smith said this was an urban myth, then went on to concede that high ranking officers who took an important call in the night making a decision could then claim four hours of overtime.

The reality is there are examples of over generous deals, where there is a logical argument that money could be better spent. The “grab a grand” bonus mentioned in this video has to reviewed along with all the whole package of perks.  With huge pressures on police force budgets there just isn’t the money for overgenerous arrangements and decisions have to be made on how limited funds can be best channelled towards frontline policing.

During the recession those working in the private sector faced tough decisions.  Many people took pay freezes, were made redundant or they took pay cuts in order to help the companies they worked for stay afloat. It’s a tough position to be in, but for many of my friends it was the only option to save their friends’ and colleagues’ jobs; you do it because you care about the company you work for and its future. We all know that police are dedicated and will want to have enough officers on the frontline.  Policing is different to other private sector jobs, but ultimately those who care about their force know that finding savings and giving up some perks to ensure money is spent more efficiently is crucial.  If that means missing out on a Christmas bonus, police might not be jumping for joy, but it’s the same situation as many taxpayers faced and it’s the right time to practice a bit of restraint.

We all want effective policing and appreciate the protection the force provides us but big savings have to be made in ways which have least impact on frontline policing. The police do a crucial job which involves long shifts and dedication which taxpayers appreciate, but the reality is that compensation designed to reward police for the risks they take are applied to increasing numbers of roles that are well behind the frontline. The overtime and deals negotiated for police who go into dangerous situations shouldn’t be applied to those in pencil-pushing roles. Earlier retirement and pensions deals that apply to non frontline police support staff seem too be given too readily and certainly need reform to bring them into line with what is reasonable and provided in the wider economy. Or course there will be disappointment when deals aren’t so lucrative, but there was disappointment when the age of retirement for those without public sector pensions went from 60 to 69 for women.

Now more than ever there are too many costs and piles of paperwork that decrease police productivity. Too many officers who are primarily in active service still find themselves handcuffed to their desks because of government imposed bureaucracy, we’ve heard from police who find this frustrating. Theresa May has to find ways to offer relief from the additional time consuming processes that have been added to the police workload. Reform has to include reining in bureaucracy. This means listening to common sense and police ideas on how to streamline paperwork. There are too many laborious tasks that don’t add to the quality of policing, the Government must be reassess the burdens they are putting on police time. This is well overdue and is the key to ensuring police productivity can increase to counter the restraints of a more limited budget.

It is more important than ever that taxpayers and police demand that wasteful spending is stopped There are plenty of examples of waste in police spending. I mentioned some stories in an earlier blog, and Matthew Sinclair commented this week on publicity spending in Cumbria, this kind of unnecessary spending is occurring in forces around the country and needs to be stopped. Less silly spending and more austerity can ensure that the police service operates better. Police who notice waste should be encouraged to make suggestions of schemes or spending that should be scrapped before frontline police numbers. If internal processes don’t allow for this then contact the TPA

Over the weekend Baroness Eaton, Chair of the LGA said that local government workers may start to opt out of the Local Government Pension Scheme if they had to up their contributions. Of course, the unions chimed in, with GMB saying that 39 per cent of their members would opt out of it.

But there is simply no other option than to ask local government workers to up their contributions. Yes, with inflation and a hike in VAT, along with a rise in fuel duty, the cost of living is higher for everyone now. During the recession, millions of workers in the private sector lost their jobs, or had their wages cut or frozen. The resulting fiscal crisis, exacerbated by years of overspending, means that spending must be brought under control. We recommended £50 billion worth of savings with the IoD in September 2009 and as part of that package, we said that public sector workers should increase their contributions by a third. This is not as arduous as it seems: it would only raise the typical contribution rates from 6 to 8 per cent of salary.

The pensions given out to those working in local government are generous as they are linked to final salaries, something which is all but extinct in the private sector. Is it likely that local government workers would opt out of this deal? The alternatives in the private sector are nowhere near as good, so perhaps this is the LGA and the unions doing what they do best: scaremongering to try and maintain the status quo for their members.

It was once considered a reasonable part of public sector packages to give generous pensions because of either the lower salaries they were on or the reward for public service. In fact, when we’ve released research on the Local Government Pension Scheme, we’re often told how little lollipop ladies actually get, and that we’re campaigning to take their pensions away. Not at all; executives in local government have hijacked antiquated systems, as have Councillors. But the truth is final salary pensions in their entirety have to come to an end as they are just not affordable, even funded schemes like the LGPS. As we recommended to John Hutton’s pension inquiry, schemes should based on defined contributions, as opposed to defined benefits.

There are other elements of local government pensions that need looking at too. Perhaps the thing that taxpayers find most egregious is executives that double dip. We’ve heard the stories: an executive leaves his or her post on full pension, only to walk into another well paid job in the public sector.

Taxpayers are rightly angry when council workers can retire on a full pension at fifty. True, a lot of these schemes have been reformed so that new entrants can’t take advantage of such ridiculous generosity, but there will still be those that benefit as old schemes taper off.  It is one thing to assume that those working in highly active frontline roles in the police or army are no longer able to continue at 50, but it is quite another and frankly scandalous that someone at a desk job is suddenly less able the day after their 50th birthday to carry on with their tasks. How offensive and wasteful.

The pension gap between the public and private sector needs to be narrowed, the current set up is unsustainable and unfair. Resistance and complaining about less generous packages was always expected, especially from well funded unions (86 million of taxpayers’ money was given to unions last year). But this is a ticking time bomb which needs a solution, so a slight increase in contributions is absolutely reasonable.

I have been asked my opinions on two separate stories in the last week that involve the police. Either example could sadly have come from almost any publicly funded body, and even more alarmingly may continue to happen unless there is fundamental change to attitudes and rewards.
The first story is about unnecessary guidance. It was revealed that police forces across the country have spent thousands of pounds worth of taxpayers’ cash to produce an extensive manual on how to ride a bike. It’s important that police officers are well prepared for crime fighting but this guide is a silly waste of time and money. There’s advice to wear lip balm, on how to avoid a sore bottom and “DO NOT PUT YOUR FEET DOWN TO SLOW DOWN YOUR CYCLE.” The Met managed to fill more than three pages with advice on what types of food to eat; lemon curd or Jaffa Cakes but not energy bars, in case you didn’t know. Some of it seems funny, but  years of pointless and wasteful spending is not a laughing matter. Politicians are now talking about how to maintain frontline policing numbers, and frankly that’s where taxpayers want limited funds focused.

The idea of producing a manual centrally was scrapped in 2009 but some forces around the country have gone off and spent time compiling their own. So taxpayers are paying for different teams of people to dream up hundreds of pages of blindingly obvious advice. We have said in the past that local forces should have more responsibility for their own budgets and shouldn’t be at the behest of centralised commands from Whitehall. But that doesn’t mean that ridiculous schemes like this should be closed off from criticism. Because it’s not just the direct cost of producing this pamphlet; officers are expected to waste time reading these patronising tips, using up more time on bureaucracy when they could have been out on the road as a cycling crime fighter. The Daily Telegraph asked “are police really that stupid?” and also said “No wonder the police don’t have the time to catch criminals any more: they’re too busy reading the manual.” Taxpayers want their money spent on bobbies on the beat (or coppers pedalling round the streets) not pointless bureaucracy. It’s a reoccurring problem: back office staff are still dreaming up ways to look busy, rather than focusing on how to improve efficiency so we have better services and value for taxpayers’ money.

I’m not, as one cycling blogger suggested, making a stand against bicycles. I ride a bike regularly, some would say not very well, but even I don’t need someone to tell me I should consider braking when going downhill or what type of knickers to wear. The taxpayer can’t be expected to foot the bill for every whimsical idea that those who are intent on keeping the public sector expensive and unproductive can design. Police forces have to put the brakes on waste like this.

The second example is an article that was written in The Sunday Times about  how the National Policing Improvement Agency spent £400,000 on machine guns. Not every public sector body buys machine guns, but the same procurement mistakes certainly do happen in town halls round the country.
In this story a weapons wholesaler, Law Enforcement International, is suing the publicly funded National Policing Improvement Agency. The LEI says it was not given a chance to compete for the contract which is usually put up for tender; the rules say this must happen to be fair and ensure best value for taxpayers’ money. And when spending almost half a million pounds, getting a discount matters. The quango NPIA admits it rushed the large purchase of weapons, writing in a letter to the Home Office that although the weapons would not be distributed until months later “this was a matter of urgency as the purchase and delivery must be completed by 31st of March.” Funny that, right at the end of the financial year. Bad procurement is rife in the public sector, as we’ve blogged many times before. The good news is this quango will be scrapped, just as we recommended in our book, How to cut spending and still win an election.

The contract should have been put out to tender as required by the rules, because public sector bodies should, in theory, always ensure they buy at the best price and give a chance for competition and ultimately the best deal for the taxpayer. But underneath this arms deal there is something much more sinister. The reality is the desire to get good value simply isn’t there because it’s someone else’s money and quango bosses don’t have the same immediate pressures or consequences as a company or an individual if they overspend. In fact it seems they have a pressure TO overspend, or at least spend all of the budget by the end of the financial year to get a bigger one next year. This is why we often see a mad dash to spend; a supermarket sweep of ill thought out spending decisions, devoid of competition or consideration. This panic buy culture, has evolved to a point where it rewards waste and spending. Public sector managers should be applauded for delivering savings, not looked down upon. The “panic buy season” is an unsustainable haemorrhaging of money that is unsustainable, not in the public’s interest and needs to be addressed.

Former MP Eric Illsley has been sentenced to 12 months in jail for fiddling his parliamentary expenses.

Whilst this will send out a strong message to those who abuse taxpayers’ money, it does not change the fact that Illsley ran for Parliament last year knowing he was guilty and that he could have continued to collect his salary up until his resignation.  Despite calls for him to stand down Illsley waited until the last minute to resign, only doing so on Tuesday- just days before his sentencing. We hear that he has been paid £5,400 of his MPs’ salary since admitting his guilt last month, which he should repay immediately. If he hadn’t agreed to stand down this week, only a 12 month custodial sentence could have removed him from this position and with anything less he could have continued claiming an MPs salary from behind bars!

After the expenses scandal in the summer of 2009, the TPA spoke out for taxpayers who were rightly furious about MPs fiddling their expenses and leaving them to foot the bill. As well as being active critics of the behaviour and attitudes revealed, we continue to campaign for a fully transparent MPs’ expenses system so these abuses of trust cannot happen again.

Reacting to the sentencing of Eric Illsley, Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“It is right that this disgraced criminal has been sent to jail for defrauding the taxpayer, that reflects the gravity of the crime and sends a clear message MPs are not above the law. He should never have stood for re-election if he knew he was guilty all along; that delay will have caused more disruption for constituents and greater costs to the public purse.  It is outrageous that Illsley continued to be entitled to an MP’s salary after admitting his guilt; he should not be able to pocket  more of taxpayers’ money and should pay back any cash that he has received since his conviction.”

Earlier today a jury found former MP Jim Devine guilty of making dishonest claims on his parliamentary expenses.  He was found guilty on three charges of false accounting, totalling over £8,745 and cleared of another count relating to £360. He was MP for Livingston but was barred by Labour from standing again. He claimed in his defence that the false receipts for stationery were actually used to cover staffing costs and made excuses that another MP had told him it was allowed, but the jury did not agree.

Responding to the conviction of Jim Devine, Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Taxpayers will be relieved that in another expenses case justice has been done. After dismissing the arrogant assertion that they were above the law, the courts have again rejected MPs’ pathetic excuses for false claims. The expenses scandal in the last Parliament dealt a huge blow to public confidence. As proper punishments are handed out to those who broke the rules, and with robust checks and proper transparency in place to stop new abuses, politicians can start to rebuild trust. There now needs to be a strong sentence for Jim Devine, who didn’t plead guilty and has been convicted on multiple counts, to reflect the seriousness of lying to exploit access to taxpayers’ money and establish a proper deterrent.

Today’s decisions follow on from the sentencing of David Chaytor who received an 18 month jail sentence for fraudulently claiming more than £20,000. Last month we watched the trial of Lord Taylor of Warwick, who was found guilty by a jury of swindling the taxpayer out of more than £11,000.